New York is America’s largest city and many residents probably thought of the New York Central as “their” railroad as opposed to that other railroad run by people from Philadelphia. Yet Pennsylvania was the larger, more profitable railroad, and its postwar timetables were 56 pages long, as opposed to the Central’s 52. In addition to running interline trains to California and Texas, PRR also operated the Chicago-Louisville segment of the Southland and Southward to Florida.

Click image to download a 28.8-MB PDF of this 56-page timetable.

This timetable lists seven trains a day between New York and Chicago, all of which left their origins between noon and midnight. This counts the all-Pullman General and all-coach Trail Blazer as one train even though they are shown separately but on identical schedules, as clearly they were operated together the same way as the Pacemaker and Advance Commodore.

Another six trains a day connected New York with St. Louis. The timetable also shows trains to Cleveland, Detroit, and many other Midwest destinations.

The back cover painting (shown above) was on PRR’s 1952 calendar and offers one of the more grandiose of Grif Teller‘s series of calendar paintings for the railroad. On the right a 17-car passenger train powered by GM E units is passing a steam-powered freight train, relegating steam to the background for the first time in the history of the calendar series. On the left a long freight train (some of whose cars unaccountably look like they have passenger windows) is hauled not by GM F units but by Baldwin “shark-nosed” Diesels.

The front cover advertised the Broadway Limited, which the ad honestly describes as the “all private room fleet leader.” In other words, it was the best of the Pennsylvania fleet, but the 20th Century Limited was the undisputed national leader even though both trains were nearly identically equipped.